Contador has been referred to as the best climbing specialist and stage racer in the world.[1][2] Notable summit stage finishes on which he has victories include the Alto de El Angliru in the Vuelta and the Plateau de Beille in the Tour.[3] After being widely expected to lose his tenuous lead in the 2007 Tour de France in that race's final individual time trial,[4][5] Contador has become a more accomplished time trialist, with several victories in the discipline. He has earned a reputation as an all-rounder, a cyclist who excels in all aspects of stage racing which are needed for high places in the general classification.

Contador's career has been marked by occasional doping allegations, the foremost of which, the Operación Puerto doping case, led his Astana-Würth team (a team unrelated in composition to the one for which he currently rides, despite the same sponsor) to withdraw en masse from the 2006 Tour de France before it began. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but was also accused of doping after his victory in the race the following year.[6] Contador has continually maintained his innocence, and has never faced any individual sanctions for doping.

Personal life and early career

Contador was born in Pinto in the autonomous community of Madrid, the third of four children. He has an older brother and sister and a younger brother, who has cerebral palsy. Having previously practiced other sports, such as football and athletics, Contador discovered cycling at the age of 14 thanks to his elder brother Francisco Javier.[7]

At the age of 15, Alberto began to compete in races at the amateur level in Spain, joining the Real Velo Club Portillo from Madrid. Although he got no victories that year or the next, he demonstrated great qualities and was soon nicknamed Pantani (after Marco Pantani, regarded as one of the best climbers of all time) for his climbing skills.[8] In 2000, he experienced his first victories, winning several mountains classification prizes from prominent events on the Spanish amateur cycling calendar.[7]

He dropped out of school at the age of 16 without having finished his Bachillerato and signed with Iberdrola-Loinaz, a youth team run by Manolo Saiz, manager of the professional ONCE cycling team. In 2001, he won the under-23 Spanish time trial championship.[9]

Contador lives with his fiancée Macarena in the city of Madrid when not competing, and enjoys hunting in his spare time. He has a fascination for birds, keeping personally-bred canaries and goldfinches at home.[10][11]

Professional career

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ONCE/Liberty Seguros (2004-2006)

Contador turned professional in 2003 for ONCE-Eroski. In his first year as a professional he won the eighth stage of the Tour de Pologne, an individual time trial. During the first stage of the 2004 Vuelta a Asturias he started to feel unwell, and after 40 kilometers he fell and went into convulsions. He had been suffering from headaches for several days beforehand and was diagnosed with a cerebral cavernoma, a congenital vascular disorder, for which he underwent risky surgery and a recovery to get back on his bike.[2] As a result of the surgery, he has a scar that runs from one ear to the other over the top of his head.[12] Contador started to train again at the end of 2004 and eight months after the surgery he won the fifth stage of the 2005 Tour Down Under racing for Liberty Seguros, as the team previously known as ONCE had become.[9] He went on to win the third stage and the overall classification of the Setmana Catalana, thus winning his first stage race as a professional. He also won an individual time trial during the Vuelta al País Vasco, where he finished third, and the fourth stage of the Tour de Romandie, where he finished fourth overall.[3]

Contador's first major professional victory came with the 2007 Paris-Nice, which he won on the race's final stage. Discovery effectively wore down the remnants of the race leader Davide Rebellin's Gerolsteiner team, allowing Contador to launch an attack on the final climb. With Rebellin leading the chase, Contador held off his competitors in the final kilometers, winning him the race.[16]

In the 2007 Tour de France, he won a stage at the mountaintop finish of Plateau-de-Beille, and was second in the general classification to Michael Rasmussen.[17] Upon Rasmussen's removal from the race before stage 17 for lying to his team about his pre-race training whereabouts,[18] Contador assumed the overall lead and the yellow jersey, though he did not don it until after the stage.[19] In the stage 19 individual time trial, he managed to defy expectations and keep hold of the yellow jersey by a margin of only 23 seconds over challenger Cadel Evans and 31 seconds over teammate Levi Leipheimer. As this was the Tour's penultimate stage, it was the last real competition of the race (since the final stage is traditionally non-competitive save for a bunched sprint to the finish line) and it secured Contador his first Tour de France victory.[20] It is the closest the top three finishers in the Tour de France have ever finished to one another.[21]

After Discovery Channel announced 2007 would be its final season in professional cycling, Contador announced on 23 October 2007 that he would move to the Astana team for 2008.[22]

2008 season

On 13 February 2008, the organizer of the Tour de France, the Amaury Sport Organisation, announced that Astana would not be invited to any of their events in 2008 due to the doping previously perpetrated by Astana, despite the fact that its management and most of its ridership had changed before the 2008 season.[23] Consequently, Contador was unable to defend his 2007 Paris-Nice and 2007 Tour de France victories. He went on to win his second Vuelta a Castilla y León, as well as the Vuelta al País Vasco by winning the opening stage and the final individual time trial. His next scheduled race and objective was the Dauphiné Libéré but his team received an invite to the 2008 Giro d'Italia one week prior to the start of the race. Contador was on a beach in Spain when he was told he was going to ride the Giro.[24]

Despite the lack of preparation, he finished second in the first individual time trial and took the pink jersey after the 15th stage up to Passo Fedaia. Upon winning the final pink jersey in Milan, he became the first non-Italian to win the Giro d'Italia since Pavel Tonkov in 1996 and also the second Spanish rider to win the Giro after Miguel Indurain won in 1992 and 1993. He later emphasized the importance of this win by saying that "taking part in the Giro and winning it was a really big achievement, bigger than if I'd had a second victory in the Tour de France".[25]

At the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, Contador competed in the road race and the individual road time trial. He did not finish in the road race, in which 53 of the 143 starters did not complete the course in particularly hot and humid conditions.[26] He placed fourth in the individual time trial, eight seconds behind his regular teammate Leipheimer.[27]

Contador entered the 2008 Vuelta a España as the main candidate to win. His biggest challenger was likely to be compatriot Carlos Sastre, who had won the Tour de France just a month before.[25] Contador won stage 13 by attacking on the fabled Angliru climb and this resulted in him capturing the golden jersey as the leader of the race. He extended his lead by winning stage 14 to Fuentes de Invierno and maintained his lead in subsequent flat stages and the final time trial. That final time trial was won by Leipheimer by a wide margin. Contador later took some offense to Leipheimer seemingly riding with winning the Vuelta in mind, after it had been established earlier in the race that Contador was Astana's team leader.[28] In the final standings, Contador finished 46 seconds ahead of Leipheimer and more than four minutes ahead of Sastre.[29] The win made him the fifth cyclist to win all three Grand Tours, after Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Eddy Merckx, and Bernard Hinault.[30] In the process he also became the first Spaniard,[31] youngest (age 25),[32] and shortest amount of time to accumulate all three wins (15 months).[33] He also became only the third cyclist to win the Giro and the Vuelta in the same year, joining Merckx (who did it in 1973) and Giovanni Battaglin (who did it in 1981).[7]

Later in the year, Contador won the Vélo d'Or award for the best rider of the year for the second consecutive season. The Giro and Vuelta winner beat Olympic time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara and Tour winner Carlos Sastre in a vote by international cycling writers.[34]

2009 season

On 9 September 2008, the seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong announced that he was returning to professional cycling with the express goal of participating in the 2009 Tour de France.[35]Astana manager Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong's former mentor and sporting director, said that he could not allow Armstrong riding for another team and later signed him. The announcement by Armstrong clashed with the ambitions of Contador, who insisted he deserved the leadership of Astana, and hinted at the possibility of leaving the team if he was given a secondary role supporting Armstrong.[36] Contador was later given assurances by Bruyneel that he would remain team leader and decided to remain at Astana for the 2009 season.[37] Contador later claimed the situation was drastically overblown by the media.[38] Contador decided to miss the 2009 Giro d'Italia to focus on winning the Tour de France.[39]

Contador started his 2009 season at the Volta ao Algarve race in Portugal, winning the overall classification, placing second on stage 3, and winning the decisive 33 km individual time trial.[40] He was in position to win Paris-Nice again after winning the prologue and the toughest mountain stage, but suffered a breakdown in stage 7, losing his yellow jersey to fellow Spaniard Luis Leon Sánchez. Contador and his Astana team later blamed the breakdown on Contador eating inadequately, leaving him without the energy to chase attacks.[41] Contador finished fourth overall. Contador continued his build up to the Tour by racing the Dauphiné Libéré. He put in a strong performance of the opening time trial and stayed in touch with race leader Cadel Evans on the longer time trial.[42] However, the strong ride of compatriot Alejandro Valverde up the Ventoux distanced Contador and he rode to help Valverde take the Yellow Jersey while finishing comfortably in third place overall.[43]

On 26 June 2009, Contador competed in the Time Trial of the Spanish National Championships. He stated that he entered the race in order to gain more experience on his new Trek TT bike, but he came away with a convincing victory over Luis León Sánchez, the defending champion, winning by 37 seconds. This is his first National Championship as a professional.

Contador won Stage 15 of the 2009 Tour de France by soloing to the finish line more than a minute ahead of most of his closest GC competitors, and in so doing took the general classification leader's yellow jersey.[44] He then extended his lead on Stage 17, after finishing second in a breakaway of three riders with the same time as the stage winner, and then the next day he won the second time trial, increasing his overall advantage to more than four minutes.[45][46]

Contador won his second Tour de France on 26 July 2009 with a winning margin of 4'11" over Andy Schleck. He finished 5'24" ahead of Lance Armstrong, who finished third in his return to the Tour after a four year absence.[47] Contador has won the last four Grand Tour races that he has entered. During the celebration at the podium, the organizers of the Tour wrongly played the Danish National Anthem instead of the Spanish Royal March.[48][49] In the aftermath of the tour, Contador and Armstrong engaged in a war of words, with Contador quoted as saying that, although Armstrong "is a great rider and [..] did a great Tour[, but] on a personal level [..] I have never admired him and never will", and Armstrong responding that "a champion is also measured on how much he respects his teammates and opponents."[50] The sniping caused others, such as the director of the Tour, to wonder "what it would have been like to have had Contador and Armstrong in different teams."[50]

On 31 July, Contador's agent (who is also his brother) announced that Contador had turned down an offer to remain with Astana under a new four-year contract because he had felt so uncomfortable being caught between the Kazakhstan owners of the team on one side and Bruyneel on the other, and he was hoping to leave Astana at the end of the year, although his contract does not expire until the end of 2010.[51] However, on 11 August, Contador's teammate and close friend Sergio Paulinho accepted a two-year contract with Team RadioShack, indicating that Contador might not be able to leave Astana as readily as he and his agent wished.[52] This was confirmed on 15 August, when a spokesperson for the Kazakhstan sponsors of Astana said that they intended to sponsor the Astana team on the UCI ProTour through 2013 and that they intended to enforce the last year of Contador's contract with Astana in 2010.[53]

2010 season

On 21 February, Contador won his first race of the season, the Volta ao Algarve, by winning its queen stage and finishing second in the final time trial.[54][55] Due to new UCI regulations concerning the nose cone of time trial bikes, Alberto did not use his Shiv time trial bike, and instead used the standard red Specialized time trial bike.[56] On 14 March, Contador won his second Paris-Nice, finishing ahead of other pre-race favorites like Alejandro Valverde and Luis León Sánchez. His main attack came in the mountaintop finish to Mende, where he crossed the finish line alone and successfully secured the Yellow Jersey.[57] He was able to ride a newly revised version of the Shiv time trial bike in the opening prologue to the race.

Doping allegations

Operation Puerto

After final rosters had been presented for the 2006 Tour de France, Contador and five other members of the Astana-Würth team were barred from competing due to alleged connections with the Operación Puerto doping case. Contador and four other members of his team at the time, Astana-Würth, were eventually cleared of all charges on 26 July 2006 by the Spanish courts and later two out of the five (including Contador) were cleared by the UCI.[13] Each received a written document signed by Manuel Sánchez Martín, secretary for the Spanish court, stating that "there are not any type of charges against them nor have there been adopted any type of legal action against them."[58]

In May 2006, a document from the summary of the investigation (Documento 31) was released. In it, Contador's initials (A.C.) were associated with a hand-written note saying, "Nada o igual a J.J." (Spanish for "Nothing or like J.J."). J.J. were the initials of Jörg Jaksche, who later admitted to being guilty of blood doping prepared by the Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes in 2005.[59][60] Contador was questioned in December 2006 by the magistrate in charge of the Puerto file. The rider declared to Judge Antonio Serrano that he did not know Eufemanio Fuentes personally.[61] According to French daily Le Monde, he refused then to undergo a DNA test that would have judged whether or not he had any link to the blood bags that were found in the investigation.[62]

On 28 July 2007, Le Monde, citing what it claimed was an investigation file to which it had access, stated that Contador's name appeared in several documents found during Operación Puerto.[63] A second reference includes initials of riders’ names that appeared on another training document, although neither of those two references could be linked to doping practices.[64]

On 30 July 2007, German doping expert Werner Franke accused Contador of having taken drugs in the past and being prescribed a doping regimen by Fuentes, who was connected with Operación Puerto.[65][66] He passed his allegations on to the German authorities on 31 July 2007.[67] Contador denied the accusations, saying "I was in the wrong team at the wrong time and somehow my name got among the documents."[67] On 10 August, Contador publicly declared himself to be a clean rider in face of suspicions about his alleged links to the Operación Puerto blood doping ring.[68]

2009 Verbier climb

During the 2009 Tour de France, former Tour champion Greg LeMond wrote a column for Le Monde in which he noted that Contador's time up Verbier was the fastest climb in the history of the Tour, which LeMond claimed would require a level of oxygen transport (VO2) "that has never been achieved by any athlete in any sport," and demanded that Contador prove that he was capable of that level of aerobic ability "without falling back to the use of performance enhancing products."[69] At a press conference later that day, Contador refused to answer questions about the article.[70] Subsequently, other experts disagreed with the calculations in LeMond's article, which were done by French physiology professor Antoine Vayer, who was a trainer for the Festina cycling team until the Festina affair in 1998.[71] Two physiologists claimed Vayer's assumptions overstate the needed level of oxygen transport, and that the level Contador needed, while "still quite high," is "not so high that you can definitively state that it can only be achieved via doping."[72][73] A third, who noted that Vayer is the leading expert in this field and "more than anyone, knows how to look at a climb in context", nevertheless also questioned Vayer's assumptions.[74]

Contador became a professional in 2003. In 2004 he started to have headaches. A few days later, while he was racing, he crashed and went to hospital. There, doctors found a problem with a blood vessel in his brain. He needed some dangerous surgery, and needed many months to recover (get better). In 2005 he was healthy, and rode in his first Tour de France. He finished in 31st place.

In 2006 his team had some trouble. A doctor in Spain had given drugs to athletes to help them to win. Some cyclists on Contador's team had worked with the doctor. The police wanted to check to see if Contador had taken drugs. As a result, Contador could not enter the 2006 Tour de France. Later the police decided that Contador had not taken drugs from the doctor. The case about the doctor was called the Operación Puerto doping case, and caused many problems in cycling.

= 2007 season

=
Contador had to find a new team. In January 2007, he joined the Discovery Channel team, and won the famous Paris-Nice race in March. In the Tour de France, he won the 14th stage, and was second in the race to Michael Rasmussen. Rasmussen had to leave the race because he had not been honest about where he was training before the race. Because of this, Contador wore the yellow jersey, meaning he was in first place in the race, from stage 18. In stage 19, a time trial, he did not lose too much time, and started the last stage with a 23 seconds lead over Cadel Evans in second place. Evans and Contador finished with the same time, so Contador won the 2007 tour de France.

2008 season

The Discovery Channel Team stopped racing at the end of 2007, and Contador joined the Astana Team. This was the same team he had worked for in 2005, but with a new name and new people managing it. However, the group running the Tour de France decided that Astana could not join the 2008 Tour de France. One week before the 2008 Giro d'Italia, the group running it invited the Astana team to join. The team did not have much time to prepare (get ready), but Contador became the leader of the race on the 15th stage. He wore the maglia rosa (pink leader's jersey) until the finish in Milan. This meant that Contador had won his second grand tour.